Hi all, For a while now I have seen threads with people having pre-release/pirate versions of games that have not been dumped. I find myself coming to the conclusion that the reason these stay un-dumped is because the game owners are scared about sending the cartridge to stranger; likewise the other party is worried about sending equipment to a stranger. I believe I have come up with a solution to this, but I wanted to get some feedback first to see if it worth my time. I can design and build a simple cartridge dumper. Much like the Retrode, but without the extra unneeded functionality to help lower costs. Of course people are not going to buy something they will only use once, therefore I plan a sort of community dumper. The idea is as follows, whoever wants to use the dumper pays for shipping both ways. I'm not talking about expensive UPS, just your local snail mail. As the device would be small and light weight I highly doubt it would cost very much. Also a small deposit is also held while someone is using the device, again this should be low because the device won't cost too much to build. It just ensures the return of the device, and once returned the deposit is also returned. Please share your feedback.
I'm actually going to back up Kiddo's call for a Pico dumper or, even better, a GG dumper (as I plan to start getting the undumped GG set done.) If you could make one of these, it would be far more helpful. With MD, we have several known good dumpers (and I myself should have a MD cart dumper sooner than later as we have some stuff to release.) EDIT: I'll do one better. If someone is serious about trying to construct a Pico dumper, I'd be happy to send along my Pico mainboard.
Seems like it'd make somewhat more sense if you paid for shipping to the person, and then the person dumping pays for sending it back. Since they're already doing a favor by dumping their game for free, doesn't feel like it makes sense they're paying both ways, but maybe that's just me :x As far as there already being known MD dumpers, yes there are, but that's not the point. The point is people don't like sending their games to other people, mostly because if it's something rare they don't want to risk anything happening to it on the way(if you've got something not exactly common and you spent a lot of money on, you'd understand this =P). So I wouldn't dismiss a community MD dumper and instead be asking for GG and Pico dumpers. The only things I have to dump are Tiny Toon Adventures 3(a pirate from the same makers of Squirrel King and Lion King 2) and Power Rangers Fighting Edition(a port of the SNES game). And Super Mario World 64, though someone on Assembler is already trying to dump that one without much success. The problem is since they're pirates they probably won't dump with a basic dumper, so this dumper probably won't be able to help :/
Paranoia about sending carts to people doesn't diminish if there's yet another person willing to dump. I don't get your logic.
I've played it. The Genesis game? Mario coin at the beginning? Oh, this community dump thing sounds excellent except one thing: There's no guarantee they'll send it back. That is all. Small deposit doesn't mean anything.
There are at least three unlicensed Mega Drive games that steal Mario. Super Mario World 64 is the only one that I know we DON'T have yet. There's also Super Mario 2 1998 (which Sonic Jam 6 is a hack of) and Super Mario World (which is the one with the coin at the beginning). We're probably going to have to tear cartridges apart and use EEPROM readers to get the unlicensed games, and in that case we would probably need a Mega Drive equivalent to byuu (who can determine the cartridge hardware layout and mapping). There's only so much that looking at the code to a game alone can do, though for most dumped unlicensed games this has been adequate (I know Sik mentioned one game — KOF99 — that still doesn't work due to HV-counter shenanigans). I should probably start making a single list of special requirements for unlicensed games to get them working correctly.
My point was there may be other established dumpers, but unlike this one they're probably not willing to send their dumping equipment to people through the mail. Or am I misunderstanding and you're saying there are other people who do that?
I got a dumper that could dump anything imaginable (well, not NeoGeo carts, but it is possible, just not worth the effort). http://www.hot.ee/tmeeco/DWNLOADS/MPCPSHIT.RAR One problem with the HK-Originals is the copy protection stuff and it will prevent you from getting good dumps unless the software is adjusted. I did made attempts to dump SMW64 but having no info about its copy protection method and no emulator that can run the unhacked version I gave up on it. And I would not be willing to send out my dumper
I wouldn't force that person to release what they dumped. Clearly I would be the one who loses out here, I had to get the funds together to build it and I also have the risk that it might not be returned. Therefore once it was complete I wanted to limit my financial attachment to it. If I pay for shipping to ten people and that tenth person does not return it, even more loss on my side. Correct. However, with the small deposit I won't be left hugely out of pocket if this did happen. Enough that I feel the benefits would outweigh the risks. I currently have a dumper and writer built, and the 'retro dumper' would be what I currently already have without the writing support. I tried to make it really simple it can detect the cartridge size allowing a one press dump. But I knew for games such as S3&K this would not work properly so I added some extra settings so you can choose the size of the dump, toggle bank switching lines, etc. Hopefully this would allow more things to be dumped but I understand some of these games have their own protections that might cause extra problems. I don't know too much about those systems. However if that is what is needed maybe could spend some extra time researching. GG has a lot of information already shared that would be useful.
In the video for Super Mario World 64 - Level 2's music is from the first level of Tailspin MD, haha.
Yeah, that game uses the GEMS sound driver and takes music from several games. One of which is Jeopardy, which also plays at the end screen. So pathetic :x
I wouldn't mind getting a dumping hardware that can process more than just MD carts (snes carts and mask roms too).
